$ whoami
PAOLO
PANGRAZI
Technical Leader · Solution Architect
Full-Stack Software & Database Engineer
Pharma · Fire Training · Telecom
Invent · Automate · Deliver
enterprise architectures at Novartis ▸ invented
a patented fire training system ▸ optimized
O(n³) → O(n²) at Alcatel-Lucent
I love getting things done.
Constantly learning.
// novartis
42k patents. 110k trademarks.
Zero data lost.
Managing the full Novartis IP portfolio data lake — 42k patents, 110k trademarks — while driving innovation, operations and project management for IP & Legal Operations. Technical consultant for Clarivate IPMS Memotech: 900 users, 10 sites, 107k lines of PL/SQL.
Migration · 2023–2025
Lead technical member: Memotech → Anaqua AQX
RFI/RFP core member, data migration analyst, 50+ custom reports rebuilt (Oracle SQL → MSSQL SSRS), hundreds of custom merge codes, member of the "accelerators" team.
Automation · 2019–2021
Trademark maintenance & renewal, fully automated
~120 emails auto-dispatched monthly with zero user intervention. Full portfolio renewal batch processing — outcome docketed automatically, no manual data entry.
Interfaces · 2018
e-Filing with the Swiss Trademark Office
Full-stack design & development — complete XML data preparation and generation without user input.
Recognition & M&A
NI IT & Group IGM Innovator Award 2013
Alcon integration (2010–11) · Alcon divestment (2018–19) · Sandoz spin-off (2023–24). Data migration, verification & cleanup at scale.
DETAILS
Daily activities — innovation, operations & project management
- Managing the Novartis full IP portfolio data lake (42k patents, 110k trademarks).
- Pro-active role in design, requirements analysis, and development of process optimizations and solutions for the IP Legal Operations PMO department.
- Driving and implementing innovation in IP & Legal Operations.
- Support audit activities and follow-up on remediation actions.
- Support with user account management activities and new reporting requirements from either the business or IT/ISRM.
- Ensuring and deploying project-related milestones and tasks.
- Technical and business consultancy for upcoming projects related to IP/Legal.
Acquisitions and divestments projects
- Data analysis, cleanup, verification and migration into IPMS for acquisitions and divestments projects.
- Documents, data and metadata verification, review and migration into IPMS according to business requirements.
IPMS system functionality & customization
- Technical consultant for Clarivate IPMS Memotech, enhancements, data analysis, design and customization (900 users, 10 sites).
- User requirements or functional specifications gathering.
- Design, development, testing, maintenance, monitoring, review and documentation of customized SQL / Oracle PL/SQL objects: packages, procedures, functions, scheduled jobs, pipelined functions, tables, views, triggers, etc. (107k lines of source code).
- Tools used: Toad, SQL Developer, SQL Plus.
Interfaces
- Design, development and maintenance of mono and bidirectional interfaces between heterogeneous systems for migration and transfer of IP matters within the Novartis systems landscape (for instance eBilling).
Reporting
- Direct and continuous business reporting with the trademarks and patents team stakeholders.
- Design and development of customized Intellectual Property portfolio reports.
- Design, development and maintenance of reports (database exports, csv, MS Office, Crystal, etc.).
- IPMS free queries/reports SQL development.
Performance & technical issue resolution
- Resolution of performance issues related to the IPMS.
- Coordination and communication with software vendors and other operators (Clarivate, European Patent Office, WIPO, Swiss Patent and Trademarks Office) to resolve issues and bugs.
- Testing of new software components on the QA environment prior to deployment on production.
- Coordination and communication with providers prior to and during the installation of new/updated software releases.
Mass communication & document generation
- Design of document and email templates (e.g., Order to file, Abandonment, CoverSheet, Renewal), including the development of related PL/SQL objects.
- Handling of the mass generation of emails, reports, portfolio reviews and updates to on average 320 agents.
Documentation & compliance
- Creation and maintenance of relevant enterprise ICE / ISRM documentation, including functional specifications, design specifications, IQ, OQ, PQ, DO.
Migration project from Memotech to Anaqua AQX
As a key contributor to the enterprise-wide migration of the Intellectual Property Management System (IPMS) from Clarivate Memotech to Anaqua AQX, I played a pivotal role in modernizing the Novartis IP portfolio operations over several years of hands-on expertise with the legacy platform. Leading technical efforts in a high-stakes project, I collaborated cross-functionally to ensure seamless data integrity, system interoperability, and enhanced reporting capabilities.
- RFI and RFP technical core member
- Key member of the project core team
- Requirements gathering
- Business processes analysis
- Data migration business analyst
- Data migration quality checks
- Full migration of more than 50 Memotech custom reports (Oracle SQL ⇒ MSSQL SSRS)
- Full migration of document and email templates
- Development of hundreds of custom merge codes
- Technical consultancy
- Reporting and benchmarks
- Communication with vendor (Anaqua) and stakeholders (Novartis)
- Member of the "accelerators" team
Accomplishments
- 2023 – 2025: Lead technical member of the successful IPMS migration project from Memotech to Anaqua AQX.
- 2020 – 2021: Full automated trademarks maintenance monitoring process design and development. Impact: an average of 120 emails are automatically dispatched each month, requiring no user intervention.
- 2019: Design and development of automated trademarks full portfolio renewal process batch processing. Impact: renewal process outcome fully automated and docketed, eliminating the need for manual checks and data entry.
- 2018: Design and full-stack development of the e-filing interface with the Swiss Trademark Office. Impact: full XML data preparation and generation without requiring user input.
- 2013: Member of the Novartis IT team rewarded with the "NI IT & Group IGM Innovator Award 2013".
- Acquisitions & divestments: Alcon integration (2010–11), Alcon divestment (2018–19), Sandoz spin-off (2023–24).
// aisco firetrainer
Invented. Patented.
Shipped.
Hardware–Software Lead Architect of a digital fire trainer with real-time, physics-based fire simulation — propagation and behaviour driven by particle systems and fluid dynamics. From invention phase to product launch, with full project accountability.
🧭
No prior art
A product that simply did not exist. No benchmark, no reference — every design decision invented from scratch.
🥽
"VR — without headsets"
Full immersive presence and depth perception without head-mounted displays. Two trainees, one shared live simulation, each with their own e-extinguisher.
🔥
Real-time fire, no shortcuts
No baked assets, no pre-rendered sequences. The fire responds authentically to trainee actions — frame by frame. Started weeks before COVID-19 lockdowns; workflow reinvented on the fly.
DETAILS
Summary
Hardware-Software Lead Architect, project management, design, invention and development of a digital software-based fire trainer system with top-notch modern graphics and realistic fire simulation, propagation and behaviour based on physics and particle systems laws. This product is designed to train companies, employees, and individuals on effectively managing various types of fires.
Tasks
- Business requirements gathering and brainstorming with the company executive board
- Full project execution and accountability, from the invention phase up to the final product launch
- RFI / RFP for selection of the external software development provider
- Leading the software development team as product owner
- Complete project planning, supervision and execution
- Management and alignment of financial budget
- Continuous interfacing and communication between business and technical hardware-software related activities
- Design and conception of the prototype (hardware and software-side)
- Hardware prototyping for the e-extinguishers
- Software use cases modeling
- Patent filing and granting process
- Brainstorming with vendor for fire and extinguishment software algorithms
- Ensuring project deliveries
- Project supervision up to the final product launch
Challenges
- A product that simply did not exist. There was no comparable solution on the market — no reference, no benchmark, no prior art to learn from. Every design decision had to be invented from scratch.
- "Build a VR system — without VR headsets." The executive brief was unambiguous: deliver full immersive training while keeping the hardware accessible. This meant achieving presence and depth perception through an unconventional approach, without falling back on standard head-mounted display technology.
- Two concurrent users, one shared environment. The system had to support two trainees operating independently and simultaneously within the same live simulation — each with their own e-extinguisher, their own physical interactions, and their own impact on the fire's behaviour.
- Real-time physics-based fire rendering — no shortcuts. Fire simulation had to be fully computed at runtime, driven by particle systems and fluid dynamics. Pre-rendered sequences or game-engine baked assets were ruled out: the fire had to respond authentically to the trainee's actions, frame by frame.
- Project started weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic. Hardware prototyping, cross-functional collaboration, and vendor coordination came to an abrupt halt as the world went into lockdown — the entire development workflow had to be reinvented on the fly, under pressure, with no playbook.
Accomplishments
- 2020 — patent granted: EP3795219
- 2023 — next generation fire trainer successfully launched: Indoor Fire Trainer
// alcatel-lucent (nokia)
O(n³) → O(n²)
Full algorithmic redesign of the SDH network topology resynchronization engine. The original code blindly examined every triplet of nodes with three nested loops. The rewrite: a customized BFS with a visited set — each node processed exactly once.
Benchmarked on representative Metro Area Network topologies (avg. node degree ≈ 4).
// Every triplet of nodes examined — O(n³)
for (int i = 0; i < nodes.size(); ++i) {
for (int j = 0; j < nodes.size(); ++j) {
for (int k = 0; k < nodes.size(); ++k) {
if (isConnected(nodes[i], nodes[j]) &&
isConnected(nodes[j], nodes[k])) {
resync(nodes[i], nodes[j], nodes[k]);
}
}
}
}✗ blindly examines every possible triplet — nodes revisited over and over
// Each node visited exactly once — O(n²)
std::unordered_set<NodeId> visited;
std::queue<NodeId> queue;
queue.push(rootNode);
visited.insert(rootNode);
for (NodeId current; !queue.empty(); ) {
current = queue.front();
queue.pop();
for (NodeId neighbor : adjacencyList[current]) {
if (!visited.count(neighbor)) {
visited.insert(neighbor);
resync(current, neighbor);
queue.push(neighbor);
}
}
}✓ customized BFS + visited set — triple loop collapses into two
The key insight: by tracking which nodes had already been resynced, each node is processed exactly once. No redundant re-checks, no wasted traversals — a straightforward idea, but only reachable after a complete algorithmic redesign from scratch.
Link Aggregation · IEEE 802.3ad
C++ implementation for SDH networks. Imagine four physical cables connecting two network devices — normally only one is active, the others sit idle as backup. Link Aggregation bundles them all into a single logical link: the bandwidth adds up, and if one cable dies, traffic automatically flows through the remaining ones. More speed, zero single point of failure — configurable and monitorable across the whole Metro Area Network from one place.
DETAILS
Summary
Design, development and maintenance of C++ & Java software components within the Network Management System dedicated to the management of Ethernet over SDH networks and devices, especially about service provisioning, maintenance and performance monitoring in Metro Area Network environment.
Daily activities
- Requirements and specifications analysis
- IBM Rational Rose UML modeling
- C++ & Java implementation in HP-Unix environment
- Java implementation of unit and integration tests
- KSH, BASH, Python UNIX scripting
- Development and maintenance of middleware services CORBA TAO (C++), JACorb (Java)
- IBM Rational Clearcase configuration management
- English technical documentation drafting and review
Link Aggregation (IEEE 802.3ad) — the full story
Why it matters: SDH networks are the backbone of telecom infrastructure — they carry voice, data, and critical services across cities. Downtime is not an option. Link Aggregation is a natural fit: it gives telecom operators both the bandwidth to handle growing traffic and the resilience to survive link failures without dropping a single call or packet. Implementing it at the Network Management System level means operators can configure, monitor, and control aggregated links across the entire Metro Area Network from a single place.
// computer science
C. Raw. Fast.
Unforgiving. Beautiful.
No garbage collector whispering in the background. No framework doing the heavy lifting. Just you, the compiler, and the hardware.
project
LiAM — Like Another Mail
A minimal multithreaded SMTP + POP3 mail server written entirely in C for Linux. No third-party libraries. No shortcuts.
- ▪ Full SMTP state machine (
HELO → MAIL FROM → RCPT TO → DATA → QUIT), RFC 5321 compliant - ▪ POP3 server with auth state & session-scoped deletion, RFC 1939 compliant
- ▪ Per-mailbox
pthread_mutex_tlocking — no races, no corruption - ▪ Two independent listener threads, one process, flat mbox storage wired by hand
Because C is humbling and rewarding in equal measure. You manage your own memory. You design your own abstractions. You understand every byte that moves across the wire. It is the language that taught me to think in systems — and every hour spent in it made me a sharper engineer in every other language too.
LiAM was built from scratch as a university assignment — it implements two foundational internet mail protocols right down to the RFC. Temp files are written during live SMTP sessions, credential files and flat mbox storage are all wired together by hand.
C++. Modern.
Expressive. Zero-overhead.
Everything C gives you — the memory control, the closeness to the metal — plus the abstractions to build something big without spending a cycle you didn't mean to. RAII, the STL, and modern C++17.
project
tuiX — terminal spreadsheet editor
A keyboard-driven spreadsheet editor that lives in your terminal, written in C++17. Opens CSV and XLSX with vim-style navigation — no browser, no runtime, one binary.
- ▪ Vim-style movement (
hjkl · gg · G · 0 · $), incremental search, find & replace across sheets - ▪ Formula engine — 26 built-in functions, cross-sheet refs (
Sheet2!A1), circular-reference detection, live autocomplete - ▪ CSV with auto-detected delimiters & multi-sheet XLSX — FTXUI + OpenXLSX, all vendored
- ▪ 16-slot ANSI theming, mouse & drag, OSC 52 clipboard over SSH — sub-second cold start
// books & literature
- ▪ The C Programming Language — Kernighan & Ritchie. The real GOAT book for any serious software developer.
- ▪ Algorithms — Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, Vazirani.
// books
On reading
I am an avid reader of anything that sparks my interest. I usually read in the original language of the author — I believe that translation is a really hard job. Nuances sometimes get unfortunately lost in the translation process, hence it is always a good idea to get the book in the original language.
I try to constantly extend my perspective and mindset reading about different topics and areas:
- ▪ Psychology: every book of Robert Greene is a masterpiece.
- ▪ Design (product design, typography, UI/UX) — recommendation: all books of Edward Tufte.
- ▪ Computer science — well, the list here is too long; it has its own home in the Computer Science section.
- ▪ Historical books — Ken Follett: how to teach history from the middle age down to modern history.
- ▪ Trading and market analysis — Elliott Wave Principle (Frost, Prechter).
Languages
Even if Italians are not well known for their fluency in foreign languages, I try to do my best to learn new languages. Currently I can read, talk and write in Italian, German, English and Spanish.
All-time favourites
- 011984 — George Orwell
- 02The Pillars of the Earth — Ken Follett
- 03Gödel, Escher, Bach — Douglas Hofstadter
// reading log
$ cat reading.log — 16 books and counting
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Allmen und der Koi
Martin Suter
Allmen und Herr Weynfeldt
Martin Suter
Business Class
Martin Suter
Der stille Freund
Ferdinand von Schirach
Der Trafikant
Robert Seethaler
Die dunkle Seite des Mondes
Martin Suter
Jetzt gerade ist alles gut
Stefan Schäfer
Kleider machen Leute
Gottfried Keller
Polina
Bastien Vivès
Melody
Martin Suter
Fünfundzwanzig letzte Sommer
Bas Kast
The Evening and the Morning
Ken Follett
Der Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse
Spiel im Morgengrauen
Arthur Schnitzler
Das siebte Kreuz
Anna Seghers
// music
Guitars since the good 90s. Music is not just music — it is art and therapy.
- ▪ Ibanez MSM1
- ▪ Ibanez UV70P
- ▪ Fender Stratocaster JH
- ▪ Ibanez RG 270 · Godin Freeway (sold)
Recorded with backing track · guitar signal via Kemper Profiler
// creative corner
Creating for the sake of creating — no matter what definition you apply to it.
// education
- ▪ 2014 · ITIL Foundation — Basel
- ▪ 2011 · Oracle 1Z0-051 SQL Fundamentals
- ▪ 2011 · German C1 — Goethe Institut, Freiburg
- ▪ 2010 · Rhetoric & Public Speaking — 2-day seminar, Bonn
- ▪ 2009 · Project Management — 3-day course, Hamburg
- ▪ 2009 · iPhone Development Bootcamp — 5 days, Frankfurt
- ▪ 2008 · BS Computer Science — Bicocca, Milan (91/110)